Statcast Broadcast

For various reasons, I’ve spent a lot of time the last few days thinking about how much I liked the Statcast broadcast on ESPN2 a couple of weeks ago. I’d like to say that it was great because of the excellent job my friend Mike Petriello did, and because of the superb work of my broadcaster e-migo Jason Benetti, and because Eduardo Perez, who I don’t know as well, was excellent too. All of those things are true.

But the reason I liked it so much goes beyond that.

It was the first time in forever that I watched a baseball broadcast and didn’t feel dumb for liking baseball the way I do.

There’s a theme in broadcasting that I talk about a lot on this blog, something you might call the “As you can see syndrome.” It usually happens in football, and it involves an announcer sputtering an opinion and then, when replay comes up, he or she (but mostly he) will stick with the opinion against video evidence. He will often say, “as you can see …” to make the point.

“As you can see, there were no receivers open.” (Arrested Development narrator*: “There were.”)

“As you can see, the fullback made an excellent block to spring the play.” (Arrested Development narrator: “He didn’t.”)

“As you can see, the cornerback made incidental contact, that was a good no-call.” (Arrested Development narrator: “He didn’t and it wasn’t.”)

*You already know, I assume, that the Arrested Development narrator is Ron Howard.

This is infuriating because the announcer is telling us, “You don’t need to actually watch this replay, I will tell you all you need to know.” As the years have gone on, I’ve come to realize that most announcers don’t mean to sound that way. The game is just moving so fast, and they’re trying to keep up with the action, and they find it hard to reverse their thinking quickly. It utterly warms my heart when an announcer — and this does seem to happen more often now — will say something off the top of his head, and then when watching on replay will say, “You know what? I was wrong. The quarterback just missed an open receiver.”

Baseball announcers in general have a slightly different, but even more intractable, issue: They’re saying the same nonsense that they’ve been yammering about for a half century. It’s like they’re still calling 1977 baseball. On Tuesday, Joe Buck — who I actually like much more than most people on Twitter — was talking about Brewers starter Gio Gonzalez, and he mentioned how Gonzalez won 15 games last year, and he won 11 games two years ago, and how he won a career-high 21 games in 2012, and how he won 10 games this year …

And I kept thinking: Am I crazy? Who in the heck still talks about pitcher wins in baseball?

Understand, it didn’t bother me that he brought up wins — that’s still a statistic that many baseball fans relate to, and this is for a broad national audience, and wins can be a decent shortcut to get into a pitcher’s story. Announcers often use batting average the same way — NOBODY IN BASEBALL judges players by batting average anymore, but announcers keep on using it like it’s the only thing that matters.

And that’s the issue: If you START the conversation by talking about wins or batting average, OK, great. But Buck ENDED the conversation with wins and batting average. He didn’t bring up anything else. It’s like the last 20 years of baseball never happened.

This was particularly galling in Gonzalez’s case, because he pitches for the Brewers, a team that couldn’t give two figs about pitcher wins. The Brewers did not have one starter throw 200 innings this year. They were one of TWENTY-ONE teams that did not have a pitcher with 200 innings, the most ever. There were only 13 pitchers across baseball who threw 200 innings, the fewest ever.

You can’t just talk in 2018 about pitcher wins like that’s where the analysis ends. It’s like telling people “OK, take out your flip phones and let’s try something called ‘texting.'”

And yet, this happens over and over and over and over on baseball broadcasts. Announcers talk at us in ways that are no longer relevant, no longer compelling, no longer educational, no longer linked to what’s actually happening on the field.

They gripe about defensive shifting — I mean, sheesh, shifts are not new anymore. They’ve been going on for years.

They whine about how advanced metrics and analysis don’t tell you what’s in the heart of the player — guys, that battle is OVER.

They complain about the number of relief pitchers — look, I get it, you miss the Jack Morris days, when a man was a man and a starter finished the job, but at this point you sound like hockey announcers who miss the days before helmets. I mean, it’s done.

Perez, Petriello and Benetti provide some much-needed perspective on the Statcast.

And here’s the biggest issue of all: There’s no counter. There’s no one to say even relatively basic things like, “Actually a bunt there would lower your win expectancy,” or, “He only batted against that pitcher eight times, so that statistic is pretty worthless,” or, “Based on strikeouts, walks and home runs, he might have pitched better than his ERA would suggest.” There’s certainly nobody in the booth who looks at baseball from a higher plane, the way today’s best general managers do, the way today’s top baseball analysts do.

Too many announcers are, for the most part, just giving us the same batch of clichés, gut reactions and in-my-day stories that we’ve been getting forever. We’ve heard it. You want to hit the ball to the right side to move over the runner. We get it. As a pitcher you want to get ahead in the count. We know. After a team scores runs, you really want a starter to deliver a shutdown inning.* We understand!

*Actually, the whole shutdown inning thing might be a silly one. Mitchel Lichtman poses this riddle: Take two pitchers who give up exactly the same number of runs in a season. Their teams score the same number of runs. One of those pitchers allows fewer runs in shutdown innings, which is to say, after his team scored.

Whose team wins more games?

Answer: Astonishingly, the team whose pitcher has FEWER shutdown innings will win more games. Why? It’s a little bit mind-bending; it has something to do with the airy concept of pitching to the score … but the main point is: That countless hours spent on television celebrating shutdown innings are probably a bunch of nonsense.

And even when they do throw in an advanced stat or a modern thought, it often feels out-of-place or obligatory or — and this is the worst — it’s done with a little bit of a sneer.

Here’s the thing about baseball that television has yet to catch up with: The game is no longer being run by ballplayers. It’s no longer being guided by old-fashioned baseball dudes. Over the last 15 years, baseball has been pushed in startling, exciting and curious new directions by people who didn’t play in the majors, the vast majority of them didn’t even play in the minors, they don’t come from the sort of baseball backgrounds that television still celebrates.

You already know this, but just to get it down, there are currently 28 general managers in place in baseball. Of those 28:

11 went to Ivy League schools

5 of those to Harvard

2 have degrees from the Kellogg School of Management

2 have law degrees

1 has a degree in Science from MIT and a PhD in economics from Berkeley

1 began at Baseball Info Solutions, John Dewan’s baseball data company

1 was discovered after writing an academic paper on the value of draft picks

1 was working in labor relations

1 was working in business development for a spirits and restaurant company

1 started in the mail room

1 played major league baseball

And many of those general managers work for someone else with equally glowing off-the-field credentials.

Do you see what I’m getting at? Television keeps throwing former players at us in the very-1980s hope that they will give us insight into the way the game is played, and yes, sure, their viewpoints can be interesting and informative, they know more than anyone about the FEELING of playing ball, the pressures, the effort, the details, the funny little things that happen on the field. They can give us the perspective of the ballplayer, and the best of them do that.

But that’s just about all we’ve been getting for 50 years … and it sounds the same. It sounds tired. Where’s the rest? When announcers start bashing advanced metrics, where’s the person who says, “Well, actually …” When they start carping about all the strikeouts or the shifts or managers’ refusal to let starting pitchers face a lineup more than twice, where’s the voice that explains why those things are happening, and how it doesn’t mean that players today are somehow less talented, less diligent, less enthusiastic or weaker than past generations? The opposite is true. When they show those absurd, small-sample-size playoff statistics on the screen like those actually MATTER — they all do that now, it drives me insane — where’s the person who offers some perspective?

That’s why I liked the Statcast broadcast so much. There was a smart former player, a smart baseball thinker and a play-by-play guy with interest in both. They said things that broadcasters never say. They unapologetically referred to statistics that revolutionize our understanding of the sport. When they disagreed, they gave each other space, allowed the booth to become an exchange of ideas instead of a sermon from the top of Mount Smoltz.

I’ll offer a personal example: I’ve been lucky enough to be on a lot of panels with former players. Some were very kind, and respected my thoughts on baseball. Some thought I had no idea what I was talking about, but they still talked with me. Both of those kinds of conversations are great.

But every now and again, it seems, I’ll be on a panel with a ballplayer who doesn’t even respect my right to HAVE any thoughts on baseball. What do I know? I didn’t play in the majors. That’s where the conversation begins and ends. Sure, I may look at it this way: I love baseball and have spent the vast majority of my life learning about it, reading about it, studying it, interviewing people in the game, writing about it and playing it with the meager talents I have.

It stinks to be reduced to: “You didn’t play major league baseball. You don’t know anything worth knowing.”

And THAT’S the feeling that so many of these baseball broadcasts stir. That’s why the Statcast broadcast made me so happy. They were saying, “Baseball is a big, intricate, beautiful game. Let’s talk baseball in a bunch of different ways.” I sure wish we could have some more of that.

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16 thoughts on “Statcast Broadcast”

I missed the Statcast Broadcast because while I saw it on my cable listings a few hours before the game and was curious about it, I just forgot about it by the time the game was on. I wish I had seen it. I read the article Joe linked to… is there any word about when there will be another one?
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I usually don’t have many strong opinions on baseball broadcasters, maybe because since I’m mostly deaf, I get most of their words by reading the closed-captioning rather than by sound. But I remember liking Eduardo Perez a lot, and I can’t stand A-Rod, don’t like Jessica Mendoza (she adds nothing in the booth, and should probably be one of those sideline women), and am pretty sad to find that Smoltz, who was one of my favorites in the 1990’s, is 100% anti-sabermetrics.
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I do love hearing almost all the guys on the MLB Network’s various shows. I guess saber people pick on Harold Reynolds, but he seems to be the perfect host for their types of shows, and I just enjoy hearing him talk about baseball, particularly his enthusiasm. The bunch of guys that are usually with A-Rod in the studio (David Ortiz is one) is mostly a wasteland, but I really enjoy Frank Thomas, who seems to be one of the smartest ex-players doing analysis. Pedro Martinez is a real gem when talking about the mechanics and other details of pitching. Thome is also very fun to watch and listen to. So I think that former players are not necessarily bad to listen to, especially if they’re in the right environment, like MLB Network’s where they talk more about the details of specific baseball skills, and less about stats and strategies.
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That 11 in 28 GM’s from the Ivy League is a very high number. I wonder if that’s because those schools were the first to actually have classes in sabermetrics (I think they do?). I’ve always felt that the best big public state universities are the equal of the Ivy League colleges, and probably actually much better, especially in STEM fields. Maybe schools like Texas, Ohio State, North Carolina, Berkeley, etc. don’t have sabermetrics classes yet.
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And I do think you need to take actual advanced classes to learn the statistics that GM’s and their staff use today. I have an M.S. in math, and have taken a few advanced (at least senior level) stats classes, but I don’t think I’m personally knowledgeable enough to do Major League baseball statistical analysis. Maybe people smarter than I can learn how and when to use ANOVA and chi-square on their own.

I think the shutdown by ex-players comes from a terror that maybe their experience is no longer valuable. They thought they’d stay in baseball forever, as a coach, GM, scout or announcer. And now the nerds are taking their jobs. They have to denigrate those nerds to preserve their position.

It’s not a jock vs. nerd thing. I see it everywhere. Polaroid probably hated digital photos. CD manufacturers hated iTunes. And ex-players are going to hate the loss of what was supposed to be a cushy life of making blithe observations that would be treated as gold due to their experience. They’re going to need to adapt. And if they don’t want to put in the work to adapt, they’ll need to ridicule the modern era until it goes away.

Smoltz , oh man … last night he complimented Dave Roberts for not changing spots in the dugout when things were going poorly, as baseball superstition dictates. I guess that is Smoltz’s idea of modern thinking.

I have enjoyed the ESPN radio broadcasts with Jon Sciambi and Jessica Mendoza. Nice light touch, with good analysis.

I stumbled onto the statacast broadcast and was mesmerized. I was hoping Joe would write about it, because I knew he would express the same thoughts I would express if I were as talented as he is. And Joe indeed appears to have somehow transcribed the interior monologue that went through my mind as I watched. Thanks for yet another wonderful piece.

I’ve generally despised ex-players as color guys for years. I could never figure out why, until someone (Bill James?) pointed out that so many of them are caught up in the mythology that the reason they became professional athletes is because they WANTED it more. It’s not ever because of their opportunities, or luck, but because they’re simply better people. And anyone who didn’t play the game just isn’t as amazing as they are. Asking John Smoltz to admit that the reason he was better in 2003 then 2004 might be in part to luck and his BABIP going up by 30 points, rather than something he can control…is unlikely.

It’s never really explicit, but it underlies so much of the bullshit that comes from former players on broadcast sports.

I loved the Statcast Broadcast – I tuned in accidentally and expected to flip back and forth, but stayed with it til the end.

While I appreciated Mike Petriello’s contributions, his lack of speaking experience and professional polish was pretty evident; it often felt like he was trying to cram 5 paragraphs into 5 seconds of air time.

I also felt there were times they tried to set up a false dichotomy between Pérez and Petriello that seemed intended to be red meat for the anti-analytics crowd. But even when disagreeing, there wasn’t any enmity between the viewpoints, which was nice. I’m disappointed they didn’t do it again; I’d watch.

For local broadcast I can see that there is not much motivation to change as they are the only ‘ballgame’/channel in town. It seems like national broadcasts would want to try something different to attract any additional viewers they can.
As far as old ball players as announcers David Cone does a nice job of incorporating the modern game into the broadcast.

Maybe this isn’t the space for this, but I thought the “shutdown innings” riddle was interesting. It seems to clearly depend on assumptions about the distribution of runs over innings. Consider the following extreme example that shows MGL’s conclusion won’t hold in every case:

Two pitchers, each allow 90 runs in 185.2 innings (they’re Mike Leake). The fictional Mariners score 680 runs (4.2 runs per game) like they did this year.
Pitcher A allows 10 runs in the top of the 1st on 9 occasions, and no other runs all season (therefore allowing 0 runs in “shutdown innings”).
Pitcher B allows a normal distribution of runs a la Real Mike Leake (therefore allowing more than 0 runs in “shutdown innings”).

It seems clear to me that Pitcher A’s team is going to win pretty close to 22 out of the 31 games he starts, and lose pretty close to 9 out of the 31 games. The Real Mariners in Real Mike Leake’s starts were 20-11. This is admittedly much closer to 22-9 than I expected at the start of the exercise, but still worse. This is clearly an absurd and unrealistic example, but it highlights the importance of clarifying the assumptions people make when they make claims like “the pitcher with fewer shutdown innings makes it more likely his team will win more games.”

I would think that the definition of “shutdown inning” isn’t EVERY inning after a team scores, but rather those innings after a team goes from being behind to being ahead, or maybe after scoring in a close game. In other words, going from being ahead 7-1 to 9-1 should not lead to a shutdown inning. But I checked a few sources, and it does look like everyone defines it the way Joe stated it.
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It should be logical that the “pitching to the score” reason explains the result: it’s more important to hold the other team scoreless when the other team’s pitcher is also holding your team scoreless, than it is when your team is scoring runs.

Great article as always, now for a possible counterpoint. I am not disagreeing with Joe’s point at all, but it could be that the media is just playing to their audience. A quick online check found this information on baseball fan demographics, from Feb 2017:
Baseball has the oldest viewers of the top major sports, with 50% of its audience 55 or older (up from 41% a decade ago), according to Nielsen ratings. The average age of baseball viewers is 53, compared with 47 for the NFL and 37 for the NBA, according to the ratings. And fewer young people are playing the sport: The number of people between the ages of 7 and 17 playing baseball in the U.S. decreased by 41% from 9 million in 2002 to 5.3 million in 2013.

Advanced statistics is not just a younger person’s way to get a better understanding of the game; I’m 61 and I have learned new things by WAR, BABIP, etc. But I haven’t done a total deep dive into all of the metrics; at some point I start to just gloss over at all the acronyms. I would have a much better understanding of this if the broadcasters would do a basic training on what some of the advanced metrics mean, why they should matter to the fans, and most importantly use player data as examples to prove the point. Baseball is a slow game, there is plenty of time for this kind of education in every broadcast.
And it will take the right announcers, and the right approach, to make that work. It’s not a slam dunk when half of your viewing audience – and certainly your most loyal – are traditionalists. I’m not saying that Joe’s wrong, not at all; but the folks making the decisions on who’s in front of the cameras and what they should say look at a whole different set of advanced metrics than Joe does. And they have not done a good job of helping their audience start to make the transition to modern baseball.

I looked for the data you mention about a decline in youth playing baseball. I couldn’t find the exact numbers, but I did find a decline from 2008 to 2016 of about 25%. The thing is though, all sports had this decline, not just baseball. Basketball, soccer, and football had about the same decline, and baseball is still the #2 youth sport, behind basketball (soccer is still way behind, about 60% as popular as youth baseball).
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It does make sense that baseball’s TV audience would be the oldest. It’s not that baseball is a slow game to watch, it’s that it’s a very slow game to have a full appreciation of. It can take years of being a fan to become familiar with all the players, and learn a fair amount of baseball history. But once a fan learns those things, baseball just becomes more and more enjoyable to watch. That’s my opinion, anyway, and it’s very nice to actually be a significantly-younger-than-average fan of something :).

I wonder if some of the decline in youth baseball numbers is tied to the increased tendency to focus on one sport? Maybe that’s just elite youth athletes and not big enough to affect the overall numbers. Also, any pre-2008 stat has to be filtered thru the lens of the Great Recession and how that might have affected kids playing a sport that might have fees or equipment costs associated with it.